Group 6 Jesriel Enerido

Leny Rose Astrologo

Cheryl Galea
Allen Magon

EL 117: LITERARY CRITICISM

Guimaras State University | College of Teacher Education| BSED-ENG 3A
01

TOPICS
The New Criticism &
Mini-Critics

02 Marxist Criticism

03 Literary Theory Today

 The New
Criticism &
Mini-Critics
01
 The New Criticism

The term "new criticism" is a literary movement that started in the last 1920s and 1930s
which originated to traditional criticism that new critics saw as largely concerned with
matters pertaining to the text (Le.. the biography or psychology of the author/ or the work's
relationship to literary history).

 New Criticism proposed that a work of literary art should be regarded as autonomous
and so should not be judged by reference to considerations beyond itself.

 An example to this is criticizing a poem. A poem consists less of a series of referential

and verifiable statements about the real world beyond it, than of the sophisticated
organization of a set of a complex experiences in a verbal form.
 The "New Criticism" in literary theory

1. Myth Criticism or the

Archetypal

A form of criticism based largely on the works of

Carl Jung with individual plot patterns of literature,
including highly sophisticated and realistic works, as
recurrence of certain mythic or archetypes formulae.
 Myth Criticism or the Archetypal

 Archetypes are "primordial" images or psychic

residue of the types of experience in the lives of
ancient ancestors which are inherited in the
"collective unconscious of the human race and are
expressed in myths, religion, dreams and private
fantasies, as well as in the works of literature.

 An example of this is water, sun, moon, colors,

circles, Wise Old Man, etc. In films we have Lord of
the flies, Lord of the Rings, Avatar, Harry Poter and
Van Helsing, etc.
 The "New Criticism" in literary theory

2. Psychoanalytic Criticism

The application of specific psychological principles,

particularly that of Sigmund Freud to the study of the
creative process, or on the study of psychological
types and principles present within works of
literature, or the effects of literature upon its readers
 Psychoanalytic Criticism

 An example of this criticism is anything about the

unconscious part of the psyche that serves as a
storehouse of our desire, wishes and fears. It houses the
libido (the “id” and the source of psychosexual energy).

 An example of the imaginary is where a child develops

a sense of separateness from her mother as well as other
people and objects.
 Psychoanalytic Criticism

 Symbolic is the stage marking a child’s entrance

into language with an ability to understand or
generate symbols.

 The real refers to unattainable strange representing

all that a person is not and does not have. It is also
a period before the imaginary order when a child is
completely fulfilled without lack or need.
 The "New Criticism" in literary theory

3. Post Colonialism
This refers to the period following the decline of
colonialism or during the end or lessening of
domination by Europeans.

 In literature, it refers to “a collection of

theoretical and critical strategies used to
examine the culture (literature, politics, history,
etc) of former colonies of the European empires
and their relation to the world.
 Post Colonialism

 This may be the resurrection of a particular

culture and combating pre-conceptions about
the culture.

 An example is orientalism in describing the

discourse about the East constructed by the
West; or in the writings of Wole Soyinka
(African Lit); or in Salman Rushdie (British-
Indian writer).
 Post Colonialism

 Post-colonialism has got to do or related with

hybridity: that is, the integration or mingling
of cultural signs and practices from the
colonizing cultures; or the assimilation and
adaption of cultural practices, seen as positive,
enriching, dynamic as well as oppressive.

 African literature or the literature of South

Africa is the best example.
 Post Colonialism

 Another word related to post-colonialism is Diaspora literature, which refers to any

people or ethnic population forced or induced to leave their traditional ethnic homeland,
being dispersed throughout other parts of the world, and the ensuing developments in
their dispersal and culture.

 Examples of diaspora literature are the Filipino-American stories by Filipino-American

writer in the US or writers in the US from the Third World countries.
 The "New Criticism" in literary theory

4. Existentialism
A philosophy promoted by Jean Paul Sartre Jean Paul Sartre
and Albert Camus that views each person as an
isolated being who is cast into an alien universe,
and conceives the world as possessing no
inherent human truth, value or meaning

Albert Camus
 Existentialism

 Existentialism is a philosophy or theory where a

person’s life, then, as it moves from the
nothingness from which it came toward the
nothingness where it must end, and which
defines an existence which is both anguished and
absurd (Guerin).
 Existentialism

 In contrast of “atheist existentialism”,

Soren Kierkegaard theorized that belief in
God (given that we are provided with no
proof or an assurance) required a conscious
choice of a “leaf of faith” (faith that requires
an act of commitment) the commitment to
Christianity lessens the despair of an absurd
world.
 The "New Criticism" in literary theory

5. Linguistic Criticism or Dialogic Theory

This views literature as a special class of language, rested on the assumption that
there’s a fundamental opposition between literary (or poetical) language and ordinary
language.
 Linguistic Criticism or Dialogic Theory

 Linguistic criticism views literary language as self-focused; its function is not to

make intrinsic reference, but to draw attention to its own “formal literature” to
interrelationship among the linguistic signs themselves.

 Literature then is held as subject to critical analysis by the sciences of linguistics but
also by a type of linguistics different from that adapted to ordinary discourse.
 The "New Criticism" in literary theory

6. Surrealism.
An Avant Garde theory eliminates the distinction between art and life by introducing elements
of mass culture.

 This is the most forward or newest, emergent theory. It is likened to an alienated form of
theory from the established order.

 It kinds of challenged societal norms to shock the sensibilities of its audience. The major
figure in surrealism is Andre Breton.
 The "New Criticism" in literary theory

7. Structuralism.
A way of thinking about the words which is predominantly concerned with the
perceptions and description of structures. It claims that the nature of every element in any
given situation has no significance by itself, and it is determined by all the other elements
involved in that situation. It also states that all human activity is constructed, not natural or
“essential.” Any activity from the actions of a narrative to not eating one’s peas with a
knife takes place within a system of difference and has meaning only in its relation to
other possible activities within that system, not to some meaning that emanates from
nature or “the diving.”

 Major figures in structuralism are Claude Levi-Strauss, Ferdinand de Saussure.

The "New Criticism" in literary theory

8. Post-Structuralism/and Deconstruction.
This is a reaction to structuralism and works against seeing language as "a stable,
closed system." A shift from seeing the poem or novel as a closed entity, equipped
with irreducibly plural, an endless play of signifiers which never be finally nailed
down to a single center, essence or meaning. It is interchangeably used with what is
called "postmodernism." Deconstruction, on the other hand, is the idea that has come
to be interpreted as "anything goes" since nothing has no real meaning or truth.
ACTIVITY ENHANCERS
1. What is your point of view regarding the "leaf of faith?"
2. Write some exemplified meaning of the following archetype: Colors (read, white, blue, green, black, white)? the Wise Old
Man? Nature (the moon, the sun)?
3. Why do we have shadow?
4. Do you consider that a poem consists less of a series of referential and veritable statements about the real world beyond it?
5. Give examples of Marxism in which the "material conditions are formed".
6. Do you agree with Sartre when he stated that "Everyone is condemned to be free?" and that "each person is an isolated being
cast into an alien universe?"
7. Do you really consider the world, in particular, as "absurd."
8. What do you think is the fundamental opposition between literary (or poetical) language and ordinary language?
9. How is formalism theory viewed as the primary function of ordinary language?
10. Why is linguistics considered as "science?"
11. Internet Researching: assign for major figures of surrealism.
 Excerpts Of Post Colonialism Literary Criticism

A. The Filipina Writer in America: Linda Ty Casper

Ma. Teresa de Manuel
Linda Ty Casper almost made a life’s work of her research on the Philippines’ colonial past. Her first novels go
back to the paradoxically troubled yet leisurely life in the Philippines of the Spanish regime. As a prodigious historical
novelist, her position is secure in the corpus of Philippine literature. She claims that her interest in history was fostered
by her grandmother who regaled her with stories of our colonial past. She earned a master’s degree in Law from
Harvard and has the good fortune of having a literary critic for a husband, the Boston university professor Leonard
Casper. Apart from her mastery of Western literature, her exposure to other literatures accounts for divergent
assumptions and writing from different points of view. A long-time resident of the United States, she has lived there for
more than twenty years. Because of this, she could well write from the ethnic American vantage point, about the
experiences of Filipinos in the United States, but she has chosen to write about the Old Country and not the adopted
one. And yet, the experiences that she recounts are enriched and further colored by their current participation in the
alien culture. Writing from a distance, she can objectify the Old World, "other" than the old experience and turn it into a
fiction. The fictionalized situation she creates is novel in being the production of a truly ethnic background and not of
the Western imperialist milieu. Her writings are the expression of a writer who feels her being a Filipina, even more
keenly, living so far away from the country she loves.
 Excerpts Of Post Colonialism Literary Criticism

a. Small Party in a Garden

Set in Manila during the Martial Law years, the novel is narrated by a highly introspective,
well-educated, middle-aged Filipina. The reader only knows her a “B,” the daughter of
prominent liberal lawyer and well-respected retired judge whose wife has died ten months
before the events of the novel take place. The small party of the title initiates the novel and
introduces the reader to B’s coterie. The occasion is a reunion of her friends, all Cornell
graduates planning their future homecoming. This is obviously an elite crowd which, however,
does not exclude nouveaux riches. Prominent among them is a general-to-be and his young
mistress who are the target of catty gossip by former classmates who try to eclipse each other in
flinty gowns and trendy Dior-cut barongs free of peasant embroidery but hand painted, severely
collared and cuffed. The men characters in the story are in a particularly ebullient mood. They
toast each other jokingly for the restructured society and the vision of greatness.
 Mini Critic

The mini-critic is an approach we take normally to our own meanings or critic/analysis

taken in one context. It is our own operation considered as a contemporary one created or
written in part by rhetorical characteristics of language in literature.

When reading Silas Marner, for instance, the reader may necessarily interact with the text,
asking specific, text-related questions, such as:

What is Silas’ personal feeling for the little baby Eppie?

What was the concept of humanity and self-worth?
What was Silas’ concept of stealing as a crime during Silas time?
Such questions involve us in practical criticism. In answering those questions, a mind-set or
framework has been developed concerning our expectations with a novel, such as Silas
Marmer, a short story, or any type of literature.
 Mini Critic

Opening Line/or Initial Text Technique

(Adapted from Peter Childs, Reading Fiction: Opening Lines, 2001)
1. It consists of presenting reprinted opening lines of a well-known text and then offering a
reading of that passage in itself and also in terms of what follows.
2. A method to read fiction, how to start to read a novel and most importantly how to re-read
a text: to study, to analyze and write about it.
3. The opening of a novel is that which readers encounter when they read the book from it
first page, and so is comparatively to define; whereas as other critics have printed out, the
beginning of a novel or story is far harder to pinpoint.
 Mini Critic

4. The intention of this technique is to show how by studying the first 50 or 60 lines (or
more) of a number of books, the reader can begin to open the text up to a richer range of
interpretations and meanings through attempting a close reading which starts with the
book’s first paragraphs but could then be continued for the rest of the narrative, opening
and it up further.
5. In terms of character, plot, narrator and style, openings are often meant to “introduce”
the text to the reader and frequently the first pages serve as overtures to the narrative they
start. The more thought given to these areas, the more Individual portions of the narrative,
will seem to have significance: what is specific to the text, in terms of time of writing.
Genre, author, historical context, setting, narrative and stylistic devices, main theme and so
on.
 Mini Critic

6. The reader should consider the effect that the initial sentence has or may consider the
following questions: a). Does it directly give information about characters or places? B).
Does it throw readers into the narratives as though they had entered the story in the middle?
C). Is it in speech marks? And d) Is it authoritative or hesitant, or rambling?
7. It is important to note that there is no limit to what can be said about the opening of a
text, it would be possible to write a book about the start of any one of the texts you might
be reading from now on or from this point onward. In addition, it may not be necessarily
the opening of a text that can be analyzed, but also the concluding chapter, the middle part
of the book, or any chapter depending on the one who will analyze or write a critic.
 Mini Critic

6. The reader should consider the effect that the initial sentence has or may consider the
following questions: a). Does it directly give information about characters or places? B).
Does it throw readers into the narratives as though they had entered the story in the middle?
C). Is it in speech marks? And d) Is it authoritative or hesitant, or rambling?
7. It is important to note that there is no limit to what can be said about the opening of a
text, it would be possible to write a book about the start of any one of the texts you might
be reading from now on or from this point onward. In addition, it may not be necessarily
the opening of a text that can be analyzed, but also the concluding chapter, the middle part
of the book, or any chapter depending on the one who will analyze or write a critic.
02 Marxist
Criticism
 Marxist Criticism

Marxism, a body of doctrine developed by Karl Marx and, to a lesser extent, by

Friedrich Engels in the mid-19th century. It originally consisted of three related ideas: a
philosophical anthropology, a theory of history, and an economic and political program.
There is also Marxism as it has been understood and practiced by the various socialist
movements, particularly before 1914. Then there is Soviet Marxism as worked out by
Vladimir Ilich Lenin and modified by Joseph Stalin, which under the name of Marxism-
Leninism (see Leninism) became the doctrine of the communist parties set up after the
Russian Revolution (1917). Offshoots of this included Marxism as interpreted by the anti-
Stalinist Leon Trotsky and his followers, Mao Zedong’s Chinese variant of Marxism-
Leninism, and various Marxisms in the developing world. There were also the post-World
War II nondogmatic Marxisms that have modified Marx’s thought with borrowings from
modern philosophies, principally from those of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger but
also from Sigmund Freud and others.
 Marxist Criticism

The thought of Karl Marx

The written work of Marx cannot be reduced to a philosophy, much less to a philosophical system. The
whole of his work is a radical critique of philosophy, especially of G.W.F. Hegel’s idealist system and of the
philosophies of the left and right post-Hegelians. It is not, however, a mere denial of those philosophies.
Marx declared that philosophy must become reality. One could no longer be content with interpreting the
world; one must be concerned with transforming it, which meant transforming both the world itself and
human consciousness of it. This, in turn, required a critique of experience together with a critique of ideas. In
fact, Marx believed that all knowledge involves a critique of ideas. He was not an empiricist. Rather, his
work teems with concepts (appropriation, alienation, praxis, creative labour, value, and so on) that he had
inherited from earlier philosophers and economists, including Hegel, Johann Fichte, Immanuel Kant, Adam
Smith, David Ricardo, and John Stuart Mill. What uniquely characterizes the thought of Marx is that, instead
of making abstract affirmations about a whole group of problems such as human nature, knowledge, and
matter, he examines each problem in its dynamic relation to the others and, above all, tries to relate them to
historical, social, political, and economic realities.
 Marxist Criticism

Historical materialism
In 1859, in the preface to his Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie (Contribution to the
Critique of Political Economy), Marx wrote that the hypothesis that had served him as the basis
for his analysis of society could be briefly formulated as follows:
In the social production that men carry on, they enter into definite relations that are
indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a
definite stage of development of their material forces of production. The sum total of these
relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on
which rises a legal and political superstructure, and to which correspond definite forms of
social consciousness. The mode of production in material life determines the general character
of the social, political, and intellectual processes of life. It is not the consciousness of men
which determines their existence; it is on the contrary their social existence which determines
their consciousness.
 Marxist Criticism

Raised to the level of historical law, this hypothesis was subsequently called historical materialism.
Marx applied it to capitalist society, both in Manifest der kommunistischen Partei (1848; The Communist
Manifesto) and Das Kapital (vol. 1, 1867; “Capital”) and in other writings. Although Marx reflected upon his
working hypothesis for many years, he did not formulate it in a very exact manner: different expressions
served him for identical realities. If one takes the text literally, social reality is structured in the following
way:

1. Underlying everything as the real basis of society is the economic structure. This structure includes (a)
the “material forces of production,” that is, the labour and means of production, and (b) the overall “relations
of production,” or the social and political arrangements that regulate production and distribution. Although
Marx stated that there is a correspondence between the “material forces” of production and the indispensable
“relations” of production, he never made himself clear on the nature of the correspondence, a fact that was to
be the source of differing interpretations among his later followers.
 Marxist Criticism

2. Above the economic structure rises the superstructure, consisting of legal and
political “forms of social consciousness” that correspond to the economic structure. Marx
says nothing about the nature of this correspondence between ideological forms and economic
structure, except that through the ideological forms individuals become conscious of the
conflict within the economic structure between the material forces of production and the
existing relations of production expressed in the legal property relations. In other words, “The
sum total of the forces of production accessible to men determines the condition of society”
and is at the base of society. “The social structure and the state issue continually from the life
processes of definite individuals . . . as they are in reality, that is acting and materially
producing.” The political relations that individuals establish among themselves are dependent
on material production, as are the legal relations.
 Marxist Criticism

Analysis of society
To go directly to the heart of the work of Marx, one must focus on his concrete program
for humanity. This is just as important for an understanding of Marx as are The Communist
Manifesto and Das Kapital. Marx’s interpretation of human nature begins with human need.
“Man,” he wrote in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.

Analysis of the economy

Marx analyzed the market economy system in Das Kapital. In this work he borrows most
of the categories of the classical English economists Smith and Ricardo but adapts them and
introduces new concepts such as that of surplus value. One of the distinguishing marks of Das
Kapital is that in it Marx studies the economy as a whole and not in one or another of its
aspects.
 Marxist Criticism

Class struggle
Marx inherited the ideas of class and class struggle from utopian socialism and the
theories of Henri de Saint-Simon. These had been given substance by the writings of French
historians such as Adolphe Thiers and François Guizot on the French Revolution of 1789. But
unlike the French historians, Marx made class struggle the central fact of social evolution. “The
history of all hitherto existing human society is the history of class struggles.”

In Marx’s view, the dialectical nature of history is expressed in class struggle. With the
development of capitalism, the class struggle takes an acute form. Two basic classes, around
which other less important classes are grouped, oppose each other in the capitalist system: the
owners of the means of production, or bourgeoisie, and the workers, or proletariat.
 Marxist Criticism

“The bourgeoisie produces its own grave-diggers. The fall of the bourgeoisie and
the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable” (The Communist Manifesto) because
the bourgeois relations of production are the last contradictory form of the process of
social production, contradictory not in the sense of an individual contradiction, but of a
contradiction that is born of the conditions of social existence of individuals; however, the
forces of production which develop in the midst of bourgeois society create at the same
time the material conditions for resolving this contradiction. With this social development
the prehistory of human society ends.
 Marxist Criticism

When people have become aware of their loss, of their alienation, as a universal
nonhuman situation, it will be possible for them to proceed to a radical transformation of
their situation by a revolution. This revolution will be the prelude to the establishment of
communism and the reign of liberty reconquered. “In the place of the old bourgeois
society with its classes and its class antagonisms, there will be an association in which the
free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”

But for Marx there are two views of revolution. One is that of a final conflagration,
“a violent suppression of the old conditions of production,” which occurs when the
opposition between bourgeoisie and proletariat has been carried to its extreme point. This
conception is set forth in a manner inspired by the Hegelian dialectic of the master and
the slave, in Die heilige Familie (1845; The Holy Family).
 Marxist Criticism

The other conception is that of a permanent revolution involving a provisional

coalition between the proletariat and the petty bourgeoisie rebelling against a capitalism
that is only superficially united. Once a majority has been won to the coalition, an
unofficial proletarian authority constitutes itself alongside the revolutionary bourgeois
authority. Its mission is the political and revolutionary education of the proletariat,
gradually assuring the transfer of legal power from the revolutionary bourgeoisie to the
revolutionary proletariat.
 Marxist Criticism

If one reads The Communist Manifesto carefully one discovers inconsistencies that
indicate that Marx had not reconciled the concepts of catastrophic and of permanent
revolution. Moreover, Marx never analyzed classes as specific groups of people opposing
other groups of people. Depending on the writings and the periods, the number of classes
varies; and unfortunately, the pen fell from Marx’s hand at the moment when, in Das
Kapital (vol. 3), he was about to take up the question. Reading Das Kapital, one is
furthermore left with an ambiguous impression with regard to the destruction of
capitalism: will it be the result of the “general crisis” that Marx expects, or of the action
of the conscious proletariat, or of both at once?
Literary Theory
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